Accurately managing inventory in a data center environment is a difficult endeavor. One such challenge in managing data center inventory is that the equipment is constantly in flux. In a network environment, servers in a particular server rack are constantly being removed or replaced due to server maintenance, failure, and/or reconfiguration of the servers in the network. As servers require maintenance, data center technicians or engineers must remove servers and then return the server to the correct rack and, in some instances, the correct location in the rack. Similarly, when a server fails, personnel must find and replace the failed server. Locating a particular server for replacement can be difficult in a large data centers with rows of server racks because a technician must know where a server is located down to a specific slot in a particular server rack.
The challenge of locating a particular server can add to the cost of data center operations as well as contribute to overall inefficient management of data center inventory. For these reasons, among others, there is a need for inventory management systems and methods that track the location of moveable servers and other equipment that are contained in server racks within a data center.
It is with these issues in mind among others, that various aspects of the presently disclosed technology were developed.